by Audrey Faye
But it would make no difference. There was no escaping the cliffs of snow that sometimes broke off a mountain and raced down, killing everything they touched, and there was no escaping this.
Jae felt her knees shaking, trying to falter, but they were too cold to bend and let her fall to the snow. So she stood, a frozen stick, as wings blasted air past her ears and landed a dragon right in front of her face.
The very last thing she remembered were starlight eyes.
The girl was cold. So very, terrifyingly cold.
Fendellen swept her up in claws and forelegs, not at all certain why there were so many lumps under the worn blanket and not caring. She had seen humans close to death, but she had never seen one this close who was still standing. She tucked the waif, mostly skin and bones and not much bigger than Kellan, against her chest scales and lifted into the sky. There were ways to warm a body, but none of them worked in the dead of night in a field of snow and shadows.
She needed a cave.
The village was too far away, and it wasn’t the right answer anyhow. The girl was hers to protect, a bone-deep knowledge Fendellen didn’t question. She accepted. There was no other choice. What she had seen in those green-gray eyes before they had fluttered shut in an ice-white face had been impossible—and entirely certain.
The frail, frozen stick of a human she carried was her kin.
She pointed straight for the star that had somehow known she was needed this night. There were rocky hills close by, if she could find them in the snow.
The sky murmured. A little this way. A little more that.
Fendellen followed, letting the message in the stars speak to the part of her that would one day be queen. The rest of her tried to curl around the cold body she carried, willing her fire into a belly that didn’t know how to hold heat in this cold.
The wind yanked away the blanket, and every thought in Fendellen’s head shattered and cracked on the snow below. Not human. The being she carried had wings. White, feathered ones that wrapped around her, even now, struggling to reshape themselves against the wind.
A whimper broke through her shock.
::Hold on. I’m taking you somewhere I can make nice and warm.:: Fendellen somehow formed the words despite the sense that she had somehow fallen into a dream and couldn’t find her way out. Humans didn’t fly. Then again, they didn’t generally turn to ice under starry skies, either. She glared up at the Dragon Star. ::You might have taken better care of her. Humans are more fragile than dragons.::
Sadness. Worry.
Fendellen blinked. Stars did not regret.
Another whimper. ::C-c-cold.::
How a mind so frozen could form any words at all was a mystery. One they could solve later. Fendellen spied a misshapen tree that marked the edge of the rocky hills. There were caves there. One she remembered in particular with a small spring inside.
She put more will into her wings. Elves liked the hot waters of Oceana’s pool. Perhaps a human girl would too. ::You will be warm soon. It is not much farther.::
::Nice demon.::
Fendellen’s heart lurched. The very ill sometimes had waking dreams where they saw things that weren’t real. Things of nightmare. ::No demons come for you. Not while I watch. I will keep you safe.::
It felt like the most important promise of her life.
Chapter 6
It was warm.
She must be dead.
Jae struggled to open her eyes. They felt as heavy as midwinter snowpack, like opening them might require an entire village with ropes and shovels and strong backs.
::Be easy. You shiver yet.::
The snowpack blasted away as her eyes yanked themselves open. She stared at the head she could barely see in the shadows, and her very strange dream came flooding back. The one where a dragon demon had landed from the sky.
::I am no demon. Just a dragon.::
The head came a little closer, and Jae could see moonlight glistening off scales the color of high-mountain lake ice. She pushed up onto her arms, which felt like the gangly legs of newborn goats.
A warm nose nudged her up to sitting.
Jae shook her addled head. Demons were never kind in the stories Gran told. Dragons mostly weren’t either. And none of them ever kidnapped half-dead mountain girls and took them to caves for any good reason. She looked around. It was definitely a cave. Small and filled with moonlight and somehow still warm. Even if she could figure out how to get her legs working well enough to escape, leaving the warmth that she could feel seeping into her frozen bones didn’t seem like a good idea at all. She could feel the colder air toward the mouth of the cave.
Wherever the dragon had brought her, it was still winter.
::If you sit against my side under my wing, I can keep you warmer.::
Jae shook, and not only from the cold. Hearing voices inside her head was eerie. First a star, and now a dragon. Perhaps she was dead after all.
::It is quite normal for dragons to talk to their kin this way.:: A long pause. ::I did not know the star had talked to you.::
Some of the fog left Jae’s head. She stared at the eyes that were the brightest thing in the cave. “The star talks to you, too?”
A long blink. ::On occasion. But I have never heard of it talking to humans before.::
Five days of pure misery rose up in Jae’s throat. “It told me to leave home and fly through the dark and it kept insisting, even when I wanted to turn around and go back, or just lie down and die where they would understand the stitching on my cuffs and tell Gran when the spring melts came.”
A low rumble filled the cave.
Jae scurried back against the cave wall.
The rumble abruptly ceased. ::I’m sorry. I would never do you harm. But I am angry at the star. It was not necessary to drag you away like this. I would have come to find you.::
Jae stared. “Why?”
The nose edged gingerly closer, like Jae sometimes did when she wanted to offer a berry to a wild creature. ::We are kin. We are meant for each other. It’s a bond as powerful as mother to child or husband to wife.::
Jae’s throat tightened. “My mother left me on the side of a mountain to die.”
Her head filled with aching, wordless sorrow—and then with something far different. The same gentle sweetness she associated only with Gran. ::Ah. Perhaps I should have said grandmother to granddaughter, then. I am glad you have one who loves you.::
The waving figure in the snow pierced Jae’s heart. “I left. She doesn’t know why.”
::We will send word. Does she know of dragons?::
Jae smiled. “Yes.”
::Good. Then she will be proud you are kin to one.::
Jae gulped. None of this felt real, including the warmth. She shivered as a draft blew in the mouth of the cave.
The feelings in her head changed to something more practical. ::We need to get you warm, youngling. I’m afraid I can’t do much to feed you until morning, but either come under my wing, or if you like, the water is warm. Some of the other dragon kin enjoy such things.::
Jae followed the direction of the demon-dragon’s gaze to a small pool of water in the back of the cave. A single stray wisp of moonlight shimmered on its surface.
A spring.
A steaming spring.
She gaped. There was one such in a small valley a fortnight’s journey away from the village. Gran had taken her there in search of rare plants for healing, and to touch the sacred waters. That one was a tiny pool barely big enough for her hands. This one was larger than the trough they bathed in.
::That is what the others do. They put all of themselves in the water.::
Such a wonder could only be the offer of a demon, but Jae didn’t care. The few baths she took were never anything more than lukewarm, wood to heat the water being in short supply in the high mountains. And her bones were so very cold. She looked down at her heavy woolen dress. It would not do to get it wet—it took forever and three more days to dry—b
ut she had underthings she could bathe in.
She reached up to untie the part of her dress that looped around her wings—and froze. Her wings. She wore neither blanket nor cloak, nothing to keep her feathers hidden from the demon-dragon’s eyes.
A grumble. ::You need to stop calling me a demon.::
Jae swallowed. It wouldn’t do to make a demon mad, especially one that could hear her thoughts. ::What should I call you?::
A snort that sounded almost like laughter. ::I’m so sorry, youngling. My manners are terrible. I am Fendellen.:: A pause, and a stern feeling in her head, which she was beginning to understand came from the dragon. ::Your wings are beautiful. I’m sorry you’ve had to hide them.::
Jae stared.
::I have wings too. You might have noticed.::
Dragons were supposed to have wings. Humans weren’t.
A nose nudged her toward the steaming pool. ::We can talk about that when your teeth have stopped chattering. Into the water with you.:: The nose stopped pushing on her. ::Will the water harm your feathers?::
Jae laughed. This was a strange and wondrous dream. ::No. They shed water just like a duck. They’re really dirty, though.:: Somehow, that shamed her in a way that cold bones and a hungry belly had not.
::Of course they are.:: The nose nudged her again, and Jae reached up for the ties of her dress. ::You’ve been traveling, and we all look bedraggled when we’ve been on a journey.::
Such crisp kindness. Jae ducked her head, hoping the dream lasted long enough for Gran to meet her dragon. She had the feeling they would like each other.
A kin who thought she was both demon and dream fragment. Fendellen kept her snorts to herself. That would likely scare the poor girl, and she was swaying on her feet as it was. Instead, she borrowed from Irin’s arsenal and stuck to the simple, pragmatic instructions Jae seemed to respond well to. They fit with the brisk, practical face in her kin’s mind. The only source of uncomplicated love she had ever had in her life.
Fendellen frowned as the girl peeled off the last of her woolen layers and stood shivering in a linen shift, wrapping her dirty feathers around herself for warmth. Many arrived in the dragon kin village because their homes no longer wanted them, and Jae’s story was better than many, but it pierced more deeply. This was her kin, and that she had grown up in fear and shadow, hiding so much of who she was, banged on Fendellen’s ribs far harder than any sword. She nudged Jae toward the water. ::Test with your toe first, youngling. I may have made it overwarm.::
The girl dipped in a very tentative toe and then sighed, a long exhale of utter bliss. “It’s perfect. Thank you.” Very gingerly, she sat down on the edge of the pool and let her legs slide in.
Fendellen watched carefully. Sometimes human skin turned to frost, and then she would need to get Jae to a healer before morning, before anything could turn black and fall off. ::Does your skin tingle?::
Jae turned her head, eyes full of puzzlement—and curiosity. “Are you a healer, Fendellen?”
She said the last word like she was tasting a new food, but it was a different word that caught her dragon’s attention. Suddenly some of the memories she had picked up from her kin’s mind made more sense. “I’m not, but you are.”
Jae shrugged, hugging her wings around her. “Gran’s a healer. I’m one of her apprentices.”
There was no healer in the village, but Irin and Karis knew enough to judge Jae’s skill. For now, all Fendellen wanted was to keep her safe. “You live in the high mountains. Can you tell if your skin needs special healing, or just warmth?”
Jae smiled a little. “I don’t get frostbite. Usually I can fly on the coldest nights and be fine.”
That was a relief—and a mystery. Jae was clearly more than a simple, ordinary human. One who didn’t yet know that she was kin to more than a simple, ordinary dragon, but that wasn’t something Fendellen intended to say this night. She’d be far too likely to end up a demon queen with a kin dead of terror. ::In the water, missy. All of you. Wings too.::
Jae slid in slowly, her toes tentatively reaching for the bottom. She gasped when she made it in all the way up to her chin, and then exhaled a sigh of utter bliss.
Fendellen felt the resonance of that down the kin bond and let go some of her own worry. They were away from the sharp edges of danger now. Everything else could be dealt with one step at a time.
Beginning with a soak in the pool.
Fendellen had never had a bath, but she had seen them. With a particularly dirty human or elf, there was normally a rinse before a proper bath, but there were no buckets around, and anyway, pouring water over her kin would be an act of torture, not one of friendship. She settled in by the pool. It didn’t matter if her kin got clean. It mattered only that she was warm and happy.
The sun would rise in a few hours, and then they could make their way home.
Her chin got halfway to resting on her tail before the import of those words sank in. She had a kin who thought she was a demon. One who had grown up in a tiny village in the high mountains. She might never have met an elf before, never mind a dragon. Or seen a village of decent size, for that matter.
She glared out the mouth of the cave at the Dragon Star. ::Really? This is the kin you picked for one who will be queen?::
The star didn’t answer, but Fendellen felt better for speaking anyhow. It wasn’t for herself that she spoke, but for her kin. Jae needed love and time, not the hard walk that lay ahead.
Fendellen laid her chin down on her tail and pondered. Jae needed protection. Shielding. Perhaps in time, she would grow into the destiny the star had blithely assigned her, but if it landed too soon, it would freeze her to death or pluck all the feathers from her wings.
Something an ice-blue dragon refused to let happen.
She reached deep inside herself to the place where the power of all queens lived. It should still be dormant, awaiting Elhen’s death, but it wasn’t, and tonight was a very good time to test the full power of her reach. She considered a moment and then sent. ::Afran?:: Kis might be better, but he had three young charges, and she knew better than to disrupt the nursery at such a time.
A moment later, a touch answered in her mind, one tossing off the vestiges of sleep. ::Fendellen. Are the hatchlings in danger?::
That would be the most obvious reason to rouse him in the night. ::No. I am in a cave two hours’ flight from the village. With my kin.::
Silence—and then quiet, sincere delight. ::You are bonded.::
She was. And while there were some complications, she let herself bask in that delight. ::Yes. I found her half-frozen in the snow. I’ve brought her to a cave with a small pool and heated the water. She is recovering well from the cold.:: And half asleep, which Fendellen intended to watch carefully. She did not desire a dip in the pool herself, and she had already rescued her kin from the clutches of danger once this night.
::Two hours is not far. Do you need food or blankets?::
Fendellen studied the sky. The dawn was hours away yet, but Jae needed time yet before they left the cave. Time to warm a little more, and then to sleep. There was no need to pull others from their warm beds on such an icy night. ::No. I will bring her in the morning. Perhaps Inga could have a thick soup ready.:: Bellies that had not eaten for days did not do well with chunky stews.
::It will be done.:: Afran’s voice was as calm as it ever was, but there was a hint of curiosity. Of waiting.
She knew the cause. He was feeling the unease of the one who would someday be his queen. ::I need you to tell the others. She is very new to the idea of dragons and kin. For now, I want to be treated as an ordinary dragon of the village. For us to be treated as an ordinary bonded pair.::
Blinking surprise. ::You don’t wish for her to know you will be queen?::
Dragons didn’t lie—that was a trait of elves and humans. But a future queen learned from everyone and used what she must. ::She believes me a demon, Afran. Let me tell her gently. As she is ready.::
Empathy. And firmness. ::None are ever ready.::
Perhaps not—but the future that awaited her kin was heavier than most. Fendellen stared at Jae’s forehead and the mark that shone there. ::I would have her know joy before she knows of this.::
Chagrin. Quiet judgment.
Afran wasn’t the most flexible of dragons. ::It is my choice to make, and I have made it.:: Jae needed to be free before she learned of the grave responsibilities that were now hers to carry.
A long silence. Acceptance. ::I will tell the others. Bring her in the morning. We will be ready.::
Chapter 7
Jae stood on the edge of the sheer cliff outside the mouth of the cave, staring at the new day. It wasn’t early morning anymore. She had slept through that, an act which Gran never would have allowed. Only the sick and very elderly escaped morning chores.
Although she might have qualified as sick last night.
She looked over at the ice-blue dragon standing calmly on the cliffs beside her. Now that it was light and her teeth were no longer chattering, she could think more calmly. Demons didn’t keep you warm at night and then wake you up and push you into another warm, steamy bath, this one far cleaner than the night before. Her wings fairly gleamed in the sunlight, and it was all Jae could do not to stretch them out and take to the skies.
An amused rumble beside her. ::We can fly, youngling. As soon as you’re ready.::
Jae gulped. She hadn’t flown in daylight since she was tiny. It caused too much fear.
::We will fly a route where no one is likely to see us from the ground.:: Fendellen, strong and sure. ::Dragons also stay out of sight when we must, but we do not shirk the sun. And the inhabitants of these lands close to our village are used to spotting a dragon or two.::
A dragon, perhaps. Not a human with wings. Nerves jangled in Jae’s belly.
A warm nose touched her cheek. ::Trust, sweet one. These are my lands. I would not fly you into danger.::
